The Art of Cold Pitching
How You’ll Secure Your First (Good) Writing Gigs
When you first start in the world of freelance writing, securing a job with a decent rate seems impossible.
Most employers won’t hire you without prior experience and a good portfolio. The ones that will give you the time of day without those items usually offer such low rates that it’s not even worth taking on the job.
Some writers take to content mills. Even I have fallen victim to the greed of a certain platform (I won’t give you the name, but it’s the exact opposite of DownPlay. Whoops). These websites usually don’t advance your freelance career at all. All of the content mill sites are a race to the bottom and more slave labor-esque jobs are posted day-to-day.
So, with seemingly no ways to improve, how can you get over this initial hump and start earning as a freelance writer?
The solution is simple: cold pitching.
What is Cold Pitching?
Cold pitching is the act of emailing publications, blogs, or websites that do not have formal submission guidelines that you want to secure a position with.
First, let’s review the pros and cons of cold pitching.
The Good
There are several positive things to consider when cold pitching:
- Less competition
- Open-ended work
- Ability to negotiate rates
Less Competition
Since there aren’t formal guidelines in place for submissions, this means that there will be fewer writers pitching. With fewer writers pitching, the odds of getting hired increase! This is especially helpful if you have a small or no portfolio to back up your writing chops.
Despite less competition sounding promising, it’s important to remember that there’s less of a chance to get a response. Don’t get discouraged, though! Cold pitching is a numbers game. Keep emailing until you get a response!
Open-ended work
When a publication or website has formal guidelines in place for pitching ideas and articles, there is little room to show your creative prowess.
However, when cold pitching, any type of work can be sent in for review. This can be used to play to your strengths as you can focus more on the topics and areas that you are strong in and show less of your weaknesses.
Also, this can be plain fun. At the end of the day, writing should be enjoyable. Without strict guidelines, this is much easier to achieve.
Ability to negotiate rates
Similar to there being rules in place for content in submission guidelines, there is probably a budget or set rate, whether it’s advertised or not.
With a cold pitch, the company isn’t actively advertising for your service. This leaves room for setting a budget for the project as there isn’t one in place.
The Bad
Unfortunately, there are downsides:
- Time-consuming
- No portfolio = hard-mode cold pitching
Time-consuming
Cold pitching can take enormous amounts of time.
In fact, I’ve read that plenty of freelancers dedicate portions of their working time to solely drafting and sending emails for cold pitching. For a part-time freelancer, this can be frankly annoying. However, it is a necessary step to securing gigs outside of a content mill when you’re starting out.
No portfolio
Cold pitching is a way that many new freelancers break into the market. That doesn’t mean it’s easy, though.
Without some kind of background or portfolio to back up the skills that you are saying that you have, you’re gonna have a lot of your responses asking for writing samples or links to previous works. This can throw a big wrench in your plans to become a writer.
The Ugly
Cold pitching can show its ugly face sometimes:
- Long periods without responses may affect morale
- It’s boring
Morale-breaker
Even the most seasoned writers can get upset when a string of denials happens. This is even worse with new freelancers.
Cold pitching is the most effective way to break into the freelancing career as a budding content creator, but can easily get newbies down in the dumps when no responses come through.
It must be remembered that cold pitching will naturally have a lot of denials because it is unsolicited: some companies simply don’t need your services. Some companies may not have the budget. The important thing is that you continue to pitch. It’s a numbers game, and you gotta play it.
Yawn!
I know, I know. It’s work. It doesn’t have to be fun.
Cold pitching, though, can be soul-crushingly boring. Mindless research and emailing isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Even though it can drive anyone up a wall, it’s important to power through and continue to email away!
What Should You Include In a Cold Pitch?
Even though cold pitching often goes without a response, it’s still important to make sure you make the pitch as effective as possible before sending that email.
Give value to the editor
- Include specific ideas and headlines in your cold pitch — by doing this, you give the editor an idea about the direction that you want to take. This will also make you stand out among your peers, who usually just copy and paste a generic pitch (which clients can see right through).
Do research
- Make sure your ideas fill gaps in content that the site is missing or that your headlines are relevant enough to drive traffic to their site.
- Be sure that your headline or idea has not been used on their site before. Pitching a previously used idea will turn any editor away as it shows that you didn’t even look into the publication before sending an email. Pitching previously used content will always result in denial.
Be humble
- Be sure to invite the editor to make any changes that they see fit. You want to show that you’re easy to work with, flexible, and open to change. Plus, you’ll get a general idea of the style that you’ll need to follow if you do secure a position with them.
- Be honest when you’re pitching. Don’t sell a service that you can’t provide, and if you’re new, don’t peddle like you’re a veteran journalist.
Who Should You Cold Pitch To?
Everyone.
Just kidding.
But on a serious note, almost every publication that you can find in your area of writing. Google your niche and cold pitch away!
Be sure that the publications that you’re pitching to do not have formal submission guidelines. Failing to follow their rules won’t look very good if you ever want to write with them!
Securing your first gig as a freelance writer can be hard. However, don’t let the difficulty of beginning your journey turn you to content mills or predatory job boards with steep fees. Cold pitch until you drop!
